How Ski Resorts Store Snow Over the Summer

Video written by Ben Doyle

[klikkolee]

I'd like to point out a more general reason for the difference in blanket behavior between us and objects/substances: we're constantly generating heat. Objects usually aren't. The blanket traps the heat with us, so it accumulates and we specifically become warmer. But for objects, they reduce the movement of heat, so the object stays near whatever temperature it was previously.

[Joepser]

I will not tolerate the Celcius hating in this video

[zaphod]

1:56 That's not what a kilowatt hour is, it doesn't use 23 kW of energy per hour, because Watts are a unit of power not energy. 23 kW means it uses 23 kiloJOULES of energy per second. A kilowatt hour is a measure of energy though, specifically it's the amount of energy that a 1kW device uses in an hour (which is 3.6MJ). So these guns use 23kW of POWER, which means that by definition each hour they use 23kWh, but at that point you may as well just call them 23kW machines as saying that they use 23kWh per hour is redundant.

[jakejuracka]

5:30 HAI has clearly been wronged by handheld sewing machines in the past, and needed to vent about it here for us.

[victornunes]

1:01 Lesotho is in the southern hemisphere, so July is on the coldest part of the year.

[laurahermans]

1:58 kilowatts doesnt measure energy but power. You can't use kilowatts per hour, you can use, as the unit on screen indicates, kilowatthours per hour. The snowgun would thus use 23 kWh per hour which would be equivalent to a consumption of 82800 kilojoules per hour

[GoLdCLaV]

6:58 “We will quadruple our writer’s salary” good luck HAI 😂😂😂

[loafer]

Mount Hood doesn't have snowmaking. They don't cover the snow with thermal blankets. Though they do salt the snow when grooming at night. This freezes the top layer.

Levi Finland is opening on October 4th with snow saved from last May.

[perhaps]

to everyone pointing out lesotho’s in the southern hemisphere: if you search that image you’ll see it was taken in july & that the article states it’s artificial snow. so nothing in that sentence was wrong, july may be winter there but doesn’t mean that afriski gets much snowfall

[Respectable_Username]

The fact you didn't send Amy out on a ski trip to confirm the effectiveness of these measures is a travesty 😜

[TBrady]

You should do an episode on Snow Cats. I work with one of the manufacturers, Prinoth, and they are super interesting machines. Winch cats are particularly cool.

[matt-roden]

Missed a couple key points with man-made snow.

You can’t just shoot water into the air and expect to make snow. The water droplets will not freeze quick enough before hitting the ground. For that reason, compressed air is also used to help “nucleate” the water droplet. Droplet becomes more of a globe like an ornament, not a solid frozen bead.

Also, 28F for making snow is only true when using a wet bulb thermometer. Wet bulb factors in humidity. Amount of moisture in the air is extremely important when it comes to snow making. At 39F and 10% humidity, you can make snow. 20F and 100% humidity, you can’t make snow.

Side note, I’ve worked at a couple of ski areas in Michigan. Depending on the size of the ski area, snowmaking can cost $100k-$1M a day if running the guns wide open non-stop. When I worked at my local hill, it wasn’t uncommon for us to cause a brownouts when we were running full tilt.

[TheMazzive]

In my hometown Rovaniemi, Finland, the snow is stored for the ski resort but also for the cross country skiing. It is a big deal around here because skiing is an important sport and hobby around here. One year some local skiers were almost violently hostile when the city didn't open the early ski route on late October because of economic reasons.

So yeah, in Finland we store snow to open ski resorts early but also to keep local people happy.

[andybrinegar]

My home resort of Copper usually uses the slab of summer snow for a terrain park (jumps and rails). The work that cat drivers put in to make it happen is truly insane. Absolute giga-chads

[fordderek]

Casually destroys the fresh water table for an entire state. "It's ok rich people asked me to do it."

[steviejoe]

1:05 Mt hood resorts don't use snowmaking, Timberline has a single run open that is a glacier.

[nicejewishboi]

Artificial snow guns were also used by firefighters at the Heavenly Ski Resort to stop the Caldor fire from burning down South Lake Tahoe in 2021

[VanislavHadzhipetkov]

0:22 Cool shot of Borovets you've got there Sam

[AidanRatnage]

0:20 I used to ski outside when there was no snow on a fancy thing called a dryslope, I'm sure it's much more cost effective than this.

[GoLdCLaV]

3:08 -HAI making up another word called skeason lol 😂😂😂-